We don’t have kids. And I’m not sure why I care about these things. I should plan to live a selfish life, do what benefits me for the next 30-40 years of my expected lifetime, and live it up. I think most people will tell you I’m a liberal Democrat. But I have lots of Republican friends and family that express their ideas regularly and challenge my ideas. I appreciate them, especially those that have thought things out carefully, and present good logical ideas. Many of them are just plain hyped up hateful ignorant crap, that only cleverly mask themselves as good ideas. Here, I’m trying to distill a short list of ideas that I hope we could agree on for our president, our leaders, even our citizens: the people that will make the United States the greatest it can be.
We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
Our People FIRST, this means everyone. This does not mean Communism. This means that industries that produce jobs for everyone, export products to other countries, or products that compete with imports, they should be considered the top of the America-first list – the super stars. Industries that buy up companies, outsource jobs to reduce costs, send jobs to countries that don’t put people first (the ones that accept their people living in shanty-towns) are at the bottom of the list – the scum suckers.
Banks, for instance, should be interested in investing in super stars and avoid the scum suckers. Otherwise they’re undermining their foundation – American industry. And if the trickle-down effect doesn’t resolve this on its own, we should pass laws that require companies to report the jobs they outsource to other countries, and penalize them in one way or another if it’s not in the American people’s best interest. That’s government intervening in free enterprise for the betterment of its people.
Organized labor has always been controversial, but there is a place for it. Americans should throw out that negative opinion of Unions. And Unions should posture themselves so we love them. They have responsibility to create fair wages and protect employees from selfish employers. But their members can’t hold employers hostage and stifle competition unfairly. But most importantly they should become leaders in Americanism by creating a culture in their membership to make excellent and internationally competitive products, and hold their employers accountable to supporting that culture. What if UAW had struck because GM was creating crappy cars in the 80’s and 90’s? Maybe they should’ve pointed their finger at themselves? Some might say Unions drove up labor costs to the point that GM had to make cars cheap. Would Honda, Nissan and Toyota have market share if we had built really great cars at a competitive price? No, we lost market share, allowed smaller companies like Hyundai, to gain a foothold. I blame organized labor for not stepping in, and the assumption that Americans wouldn’t buy that “ching chang junk.”
Accept that the World is Different, so is business, so is competition. After World War II, list the country that had the least attacks on it’s industry: United States of America. Every other country was bombed into oblivion. Japan – devastated. Europe – devastated. Where would those countries get their industrial equipment, their cars and trucks, their everything? Well, us of course. Of course there were jobs in the 50’s, 60’s and 70’s! It takes decades for countries to catch up from an unnatural disaster like world war. It’s been decades, and other countries are producing good stuff, lots of it, and very efficiently.
And don’t think that the old outdated belief that other countries aren’t as innovative or creative. Maybe they weren’t, but they’re becoming well-educated and they’re great problem solvers. Don’t rely on this for our future. We have to be MORE creative, more efficient, and better than them at what we do.
Give Preference to American Business, disadvantage others that don’t fit our fundamentals. Since when do we have open trade with a Communist country that manipulates currency, commits human rights violations? Remember Tiananmen Square? It’s because we’re selfish, and our wants for cheap product are greater than our morals. It’ll hurt to make even a slight change. Is it worth it?
Why do we outsource jobs (programming, helpdesk, engineering, etc.) to countries like Pakistan (who shelters terrorists but ironically allows us to hunt them) while we have people on welfare? We have unemployed recent college graduates that can’t find jobs because “monotonous programming jobs” are outsourced to these kinds of countries. Those monotonous jobs are how those recent graduates become the highly skilled 15 years from now. When all Americans are well employed, then outsource jobs. But until then, we just plain shouldn’t do it. It’s not a smart strategic thing to do.
Invest in the next generation. This means our kids have to be the best educated. This doesn’t mean getting kids to college. This means we teach and inspire kids to perform the jobs we need. Strategically, what kinds of skills do we need 20 years from now to fuel the next generation of industry, intellect and even military weaponry? We usually need more engineers, researchers and scientists, and fewer bankers, lawyers. But, programs like No Child Left Behind threatens to produce a tremendous population of the uninspired – teachers and students.
And if kids aren’t right for college, they can do other important functions. If we’re going to make great things, shouldn’t they have a career path towards doing those things? I think of one example – machinists. Our schools have decided it’s too dangerous for kids to operate machines. They might get cut, or get burned, or they might put an eye out. How else will many kids learn if we don’t teach them? Maybe machine shop will inspire a kid to become a mechanical engineer, or appreciate math. If we don’t teach them to fish, they’ll be a burden to society, and worse they won’t be a part of America becoming everything we can be.
Protect Intellectual Property. I’m as guilty as anyone else. I have a garage full of tools that were made in China. Some are tools built by companies that have legitimate rights to manufacture their patented products in other countries. Others, I’m sure, are patent violations that are pretty much overlooked. Should another country simply be able to copy a product that an US inventor developed, produce it with near-slave-labor, then sell it all over the world and undercut the American gain? I don’t think so. But when you crank down the screws, Americans will have to feel the pain of higher priced products. And it will have to be a unilateral strategy, meaning other countries have to agree on a protocol to deal with it.
Never sacrifice our greatest assets for short-term gain. Most of these topics are weaving themselves together. It’s not a coincidence. Investment bankers that force offshoring intellect to make a short buck should be criminal, but certainly morally reprehensible. It happens so often that we accept it as a norm. Suddenly we’ve lost the asset of capacity to produce. When times get tougher internationally, we have unemployed.
Environmental issues are the same. NEVER should we allow a company to pollute our land, our water, the place we live, for a buck. Maybe by polluting we make some money, maybe we make jobs, and maybe it lasts for 50 years. Sounds good, but 50 years from now people have poisoned kids, uninhabitable space, lack of beautiful places to enjoy. Making capitalists the stewards of the environment is worse than the fox guarding the hen house. The fox eventually gets his fill and the problem can be quickly corrected.
Return the United States to an International Moral Leader. How can we influence other countries to build fair trade, when none of them trust us? When we execute our military power, we have to be absolutely justified. Otherwise we’re just after the oil, or we’re settling a grudge, or some other selfish reasoning.
When you act, you’d better act with righteousness, and a purpose that will be historically evident. And it had better be to protect people, humanity, and never for economic purpose or moral / cultural disagreement.
Keep America the Melting Pot – invite people into the country that we need, and make sure they feel welcome so they stay. We should embrace other cultures, as long as they don’t violate our fundamental social basics (like treatment of women, tolerance of others.) Too many times, Christians discriminate against Muslims, or Muslims don’t like Jews, or whatever. Your religion will stand on its own – let people do their thing. You will be discovered if you’re really that good. Just don’t run off people we need. We’ve been absorbing the greatest talent from all over the world for centuries – how do you think we had “the bomb” first? Einstein wasn’t American-born. But now, people are very portable. A talented well-trained engineer or physicist can get tired of being mistreated by their neighbors, being treated like a terrorist, they send their resume’ somewhere else over the Internet, grab up their family, get on a plane, 24 hours and they’re teaching new and talented engineers at a college in their home country where people let them do their thing. A hundred years ago, it was too hard to go back, even to visit family. Not so anymore.
OK, I’m done venting for now. This is V1.0. I may come back and edit this. I’m allowed to change my mind.